About technique and more.

Video with Polaroid

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Last week Sharon and I visited a good friend and fellow photographer Pim van der Maden in his studio, which actually is very close to our studio (walking distance). Pim and I talked a few months ago about a large format Polaroid he still owned but hardly used anymore, I immediately got the idea that it would be cool to show you guys a small video in which Pim would explain how he worked with this camera.

When we started working with the camera the talk however soon became much more than just about the Polaroid, we just kept the camera rolling and decided we would edit it into a small “podcast” “interview on location” “instructional” video. And today you can see the video here on the blog. I hope you enjoy it, and even if you’re not into Polaroids (who isn’t ?) I think there are some very interesting things there that you can use in your own photography.

Many thanks to Emma, Pim and Sharon.
Visit Pim at his site : http://www.pimvandermaden.com

 

Competition winners

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When the guys from CameraNu.nl asked me to be the judge for their fotowedstrijd.nl competition I did not have to wait long with my answer. I love the store and a lot of my gear is delivered by them, I’ve know the owner like forever (he brought me my first 10D in person at my house). In the last few years their company has grown into a “monster” camera store with good reputation on service and knowledge, but enough of the promotion…. In this blogpost I’ll show you the winners (and one runner up) and will give you my motivation in what I look for in a winning shot.

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New images Susanne

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Today a few images from the workshop we did this weekend with Susanne.
In this case it was the Workshop Studio Technique I.

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Extra note on calibrating lightmeters

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Something a lot of people struggle with when calibrating the light meter is the calibration… on this blog I have a special selection on light meters (check it out :-)).
When I teach my students to calibrate the meter to the camera I always use an 18% gray card and shoot this in a as flat as possible light situation and make sure that in the workflow I use the values for this card are 128.128.128

 

Here is where the confusion starts.
Some cameras are calibrated different, cameras use reflective metering and are set in values between 12-18% gray. Meaning that some cameras will yield different exposures, which can be compensated. A lot of this has to do with the gamma curves and different colorspaces. For example when we look at LAB a gamma curve of around 2.47 will Yield a 128.128.128 value, but mostly gammas of 1.8 and 2.2 are used in colorspaces like sRGB and ProPhotoRGB.
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